Malaysia plane downed by top Russian export

Russian-made SAM has long held the respect of the world’s militaries

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 over Ukraine by suspected separatists using a Russian-made “Buk” surface-to-air missile, or SAM, is a grim reminder of a Cold War truism.

Russian SAMs are some of the deadliest in the business.

Vitaly V. Kuzmin/Wikipedia

While the ground weapons of Russia and the predecessor Soviet Union — namely, the T-72 main battle tank and BMP-series infantry fighting vehicles — have fared particularly poorly in combat in Middle East wars against the Israelis and later against U.S. and coalition forces in the 1991 and 2003 Iraq conflicts, the performance of their surface-to-air missile systems is a far different story.

“We gave the Russian SAMs a lot of respect,” said U.S. Navy Commander (ret.) Kevin Sidenstricker, a former U.S. Navy backseat Radar Intercept Officer who flew aboard F-14 Tomcats during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as well as Operation Southern Watch, patrolling Iraqi airspace after the 1991 Gulf War.

“The first time you don’t respect one, it’s going to get you,” the Fighter Weapons School or “Top Gun” graduate said in an interview.

The power of Soviet SAMs was probably first demonstrated with the shoot-down of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in May 1960 by an SA-2 “Guideline” (its NATO code name) missile at a height of over 70,000 feet, more than twice the height that Malaysian flight MH17 was flying when it was shot down over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which has seen ongoing violence between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia separatists.

At least one U.S. citizen was killed on the flight, President Obama said Friday at a White House briefing, along with as many as 100 AIDS researchers and health workers, who were headed to a conference in Australia.

The “Buk,” or SA-11 “Gadfly” as it’s known in NATO parlance, entered service with Soviet forces in the 1980s. It’s a mobile launcher that carries as many as four missiles on a truck or tracked vehicle with a separate radar unit that can track and engage multiple targets at once. It can engage aircraft, drones and even cruise and some ballistic missiles to heights of 70,000 feet and distances of up to 30 miles.

Sidenstricker said that while he was on night patrol over Iraq in 2003 he was engaged by Russian SAMs, which had been fired unguided, as Iraqi forces learned quickly not to turn on their radars or risk being destroyed. “We couldn’t tell if they were 2 miles away or 20 miles away,” he said. “It definitely got your attention.”

The “Buk” is just one of many in a long line of successful Soviet and Russia SAM systems.

After the Arab militaries were caught on the ground by the Israeli Air Force in the 1967 war, the Egyptians and Syrians went on a shopping spree for Soviet-made SAMs. As a result, the Israelis lost dozens of planes in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to Russian SAMs over the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal, until the U.S. supplied the Israelis with radar jammers, Sidenstricker said.

The North Vietnamese used Russian SAMs to deadly effect against U.S. B-52s during the raids against Hanoi, when more than a dozen bombers were lost during the “Christmas bombings” of Operation Linebacker II in December 1972, with the SA-2 “Guideline” missile yet again. Pilots and crews learned to look for a “wiggling penlight” or a “flying telephone pole on fire” that indicated a SAM had locked on to their aircraft.

Also, during the first Gulf War, in 1991, most of the 38 Allied coalition aircraft combat losses came from mobile and handheld Russian SAMs used by the Iraqis.

Even in the 1999 Bosnian conflict, the U.S. lost its first F-117 Stealth fighter, thought to be undetectable to radar, to a near-obsolete Russian SA-3 “Goa” SAM system, which had first entered service in 1961. Now-famous pilot Scott O’Grady had his F-16 shot down by a Russian-built SA-6 that year, as well. (The O’Grady episode became the basis for the 2001 movie “Behind Enemy Lines,” with Owen Wilson, which dramatized the shoot-down with a Russian-made SAM.)

In recent years, Russia has exported surface-to-air missile systems to China, Iran and Syria, including the S-400 SAM system, one of the most advanced in the world, which is capable of destroying ballistic missiles and stealth weapons.

Sidenstricker recalled a close call in which a Russian SAM passed within a mile of F-14 Tomcats patrolling over Afghanistan. “I’m sure they had to change their flight suits afterwards,” he said.

Sidenstricker said that while military aircraft like his could deploy anti-radar “chaff,” or infrared flares, to decoy radar-guided or heat-seeking SAMs, civilian aircraft like the Malaysian airliner have none of these defenses, and it would be dangerous for civilian airliners to carry decoy flares, he said. “The risks outweigh the benefits,” he said. “To start doing this with commercial aircraft, you are going to have accidents.”

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